Tag Archive for happiness

Before noon today, I received surprise news concealed in a routine email – an acquaintance is engaged … and expecting!

I shouldn’t have been surprised. It capped an already happy morning. I came in early and was done what I thought would take all morning before nine, and then found a meeting canceled – happy day indeed, which, in turn, laced and tied a wonderful weekend. More than happy, it was a weekend, no a time, of love.

Saturday morning ML and I brunched with an old friend. I was blessed to grow up with “family friends” – I was probably 20 or so before I realized not everyone had this. But we did. And this friend – J – almost exactly a year younger than me has been my friend pretty literally from (her) birth. We shared a crib and a childhood at the therapeutic camp our parents ran that integrated “typical” kids and those with emotional disturbances or developmental disabilities (yessss, it was the 70s), holidays and playgrounds. She and her family are more than friend, sometimes more than family. We spent weekends in a multi-family cabin in the Adirondacks, touring Williamsburg one year, at their community pool, after they moved to Virginia, a lifetime away then, when I was a kid.

Her dad’s calm, steady, soothing eulogy is one of the few concrete moments I can recall from my dad’s funeral when I was twelve, their support instrumental beyond measure in helping us all move beyond that day and breathe again.

BTW: stop yer complainin. You just saw washwords (till I take it down. the interweb is a scary place.)

And speaking of the interweb…it IS a crazy place, and mostly not in a scary, but just in a fascinating way. And nowhere did I see this more than in sharing my very good news.

In 1997, if you became engaged, you called people you wanted to know. Those people usually asked who they should/could tell and the word spread to exactly those people. I think I did send a few emails to the friends of friends. My email address was v01269b3x7@. I’d heard of cell phones. Old people and wealthy people had them in their cars. Sometimes.

In 2008, when you tell the world you’re engaged, you TELL THE WORLD. At once. Meaning my long-lost elementary school playmates found out about the same time as my bestest DC bud’s hubby, my former Read the rest of this entry »